


Deja Vu

by alexis (of_too_minds)



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 04:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_too_minds/pseuds/alexis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He used to see her everywhere he went, but it had been a long time since he’d made that mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was raining in Seattle.  The streets were grimy, the buildings old and worn and covered in graffiti.  In some places it looked like the layers of posters plastered on the walls were the only thing holding them up.  Things weren’t as bad as they had been, but Seattle definitely wasn’t back to its pre-Pulse glory.  Not so much broken as run down.  In the years following the Pulse no one had the money to maintain the buildings; now, after so many years of neglect, there wasn’t much point. 

Fifteen years ago, after she left, he’d got in the habit of walking the streets of Seattle at night.  Sometimes he’d wandered past all her former haunts –- Jam Pony, the Needle, Crash.  Sometimes he’d avoided them altogether.  He didn’t go walking now as often as he used to; usually only on their anniversaries –- the night they first met, the night she returned to him from Manticore, the night she left Seattle forever.  Those nights he was too restless to sleep.  Like tonight.  She’d been on his mind a lot lately.  He didn’t want to dream of her, to imagine her with him, in his apartment, in his bed.  So he walked.

Pulsing neon lights and harsh rock music spilled from the open doorway of an arcade up the block, where a crowd of teenagers slouched at the entrance.  Logan was about to cross the street and move on when he caught a glimpse of a girl step away from the group and head off down the street.  A girl with long brown hair, dressed in sleek, black leather.  He blinked rapidly, several times, forced himself to breath deeply.   _'It’s just an illusion,'_ he told himself fiercely.   _'Get a grip.'_  He used to see her everywhere he went, but it had been a long time since he’d made that mistake.

The girl paused and glanced over her shoulder.  The lights from the arcade slid along the soft curve of her cheek and down the line of her jaw.  His breath caught in his throat; he knew those features, they were burned into his memory.  Heart pounding, he rushed after her as she disappeared down an alley at the end of the block.

But when he got there, the alley was empty and still.  No one was there.  Of course not; she hadn’t been there in the first place.  It was just a figment of the imagination conjured up by his tired mind to torture himself with.  She hadn’t been in Seattle in 15 years.   _'Fool!'_ he cursed himself silently.  But he couldn’t stop himself from calling out to the darkness, “Max?”

The girl stepped out from the shadows, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet, her hands curled tight into fists.  “Why did you call me that?  How do you know that name?” she demanded, poised to strike.  

She was far too young to be Max.  Too young even to be a Manticore clone.  He could see that her body had just begun to turn from child to woman; she couldn’t be more than 13.  But she held herself with the same deadly grace as Max.  And she wore Max’s face; the same line of cheek, jaw and nose.  Only the eyes were different; instead of the deep brown pools he remembered, these were a brilliant green.  And then he understood.

“I knew your mother a long time ago,” he said quietly.  “Max and I were…close friends.  I’m Logan Cale.”

She stared intently at him for several seconds then abruptly dropped her fighter’s stance.  Tossing her long brown hair over her shoulder, she said “I’m Sasha.”  And then she smiled at him with the same cocky grin that Alec always wore.

It hurt to see _his_ eyes and _his_ smile in _her_ beautiful face.  Hurt even more to know that Max had shared so much of herself with Alec.  Almost the last time he’d ever seen her she swore she’d never have a child.

Suddenly Sasha blurred past him, arm outstretched as if to ward off a blow.  “No Nan, don’t!” she cried out.  Logan spun around to see another girl, a few years older than Sasha, fist cocked to slam him unconscious.  “It’s Logan, Nan!”

Nan’s gaze flicked across his features, as if tallying them against a mental picture.  She shrugged and lowered her fist.  “Alright.  I thought you were some pervert checking out my girl.  It’s her first run, and she’s still too green to know better than to talk to strangers.”

“I do too!” Sasha protested, indignant.

“Whatever.  I’m Nan, Gem’s daughter.”  Logan remembered Gem.  She’d gone into labour during the hostage taking at Jam Pony and delivered her baby while White’s heavies were trying to kill them.

“Hey, you still living in that penthouse?  Max was always going on about the view.”  Sasha looked at him with eager curiosity.  She had no idea what it would do to him to see her there, looking so much like her mother.  But Logan found he couldn’t say no to her, anymore than he could to Max.

 

* * *

 

The penthouse was emptier now than it had been 15 years ago.  The paintings and other artwork had all been sold long ago to finance Eyes Only.  The only thing he kept was the statue Max had stolen from him the night they met.  Sasha paused when she came across it.  She touched it, gently, with the tips of her fingers and then wandered over to the big picture window.  She leaned up against the glass, staring out at the city lights the way her mother had so many times.

Logan stared hungrily at Sasha’s reflection in the window.  From this distance he couldn’t tell what colour her eyes were, he could only see her face.  He could almost fool himself into thinking Max had come back to him.  But she hadn’t.  Instead she’d let her daughter come to this city, knowing he might see her, knowing how much it would hurt him if he did.  Obviously he was the only one still holding on to their past, he thought bitterly.  Logan crossed his arms and pinched the inside of one elbow, hard, to distract himself.

As if in answer to his thoughts Nan said, “We aren’t supposed to be here.  Max will be furious when she finds out.  She thought it was too dangerous, especially for a first run.”

“First run?” Logan asked, quizzical.

“It’s like a training mission.  We have to learn to pass for human, in case anything ever happens to Sanctuary and we have to scatter.  On our first fun, we get a minder.  I’m hers.” 

Logan looked at the two girls.  “But, aren’t you both a little…young…to be out on your own?”

Nan rolled her eyes.  “We may not have barcodes but we’re still X-5s.  Not exactly your average teenager.”

“Right.  Sorry, I’ve been out of the loop for a while.”

 “Sasha tried to give me the slip.  She wanted to come here on her own.”

“Yeah, and you ruined that plan,” Sasha grumbled from the window. 

“They would’ve killed me if I’d let you loose on your own.  You know that.  Just be glad I agreed to come here at all,” Nan said impatiently, clearly having made this point many times before.

“It’s not that dangerous.  It’s not like there’s crazed mobs around every corner or anything.”

Nan glanced at Logan out of the corner of her eye.  “I don’t think that’s what Max was afraid of.”

After that they were silent for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.  


	2. Chapter 2

Sanctuary was the name the transgenics gave their home.  It was a remote mining town in the Colorado Rockies, 100 miles from the nearest settlement.  It had been abandoned during the Pulse.  Officially, it didn’t exist.

Fifteen years ago the public had demanded a very permanent solution to the problem of the transgenics, and the government was inclined to agree.  Until the spymasters quietly reminded the government that America’s enemies were busy researching gene-splicing techniques and biosynth technology in their quest to design their own perfect soldier.  The X-series was still the best in the world.  Eliminating the transgenics just to control a public relations nightmare might be…premature.  Reluctantly the government agreed and offered to relocate the transgenics, on two conditions.  First, the public must never find out.  Second, the X-series’ special talents must be available whenever the government had need of them, no questions asked.

The public would never have agreed to the relocation -– they wanted blood.  So an elaborate ruse was designed.  A dozen smoke bombs were shot into Terminal City.  The crowd of protestors 10 blocks away were told the canisters contained an experimental nerve gas that specifically targeted transgenic DNA.  Then the army stormed the compound.  In reality, the transgenics were unaffected by the smoke, and the sound of gun battles came from guns fired harmlessly into the air.

The transgenics were loaded onto stretchers covered by sheets and carried out of Terminal City to waiting vans.  Lying down on those stretchers required the greatest act of courage and faith Logan had ever seen.  The transgenics had no guarantee that this wasn’t in fact a double-ruse designed to capture them all.  They’d debated whether to accept the offer for 2 days, before finally deciding the risk was worth it.  And it paid off.

The government made their offer the night Max told him that he had to leave, that it was over between them.  She still made him go, but she agreed to hook up the web cam again, so that Logan could watch from Joshua’s house.  He had to know what happened to her, even if he couldn’t be there with her. 

Logan had always wondered why the breeding cult never exposed the government’s plan to deceive the public and leave the transgenics alive and free.  No doubt someone from the cult was privy to the details of the plan, if not White himself.  Logan finally decided the cult felt less threatened by the transgenics if they were accounted for in a remote mining town than if they were still at large, most of them able to disappear into a crowd.  Whatever the reason, the cult left the transgenics alone.  Logan kept digging for the truth, but he didn’t find out much more than he had that first year.  He never located Sandeman, or discovered what those weird tattoos really meant.  Idly he wondered if they’d ever faded from Max’s skin, and whether she’d passed them on to Sasha.

In world mythology and legend the “chosen one” didn’t always refer to the people’s saviour; sometimes it meant the person chosen to bear the reincarnation of the god.  Logan wondered if the breeding cult was so afraid of Max because they suspected that one day she’d have a child who could bring them down.

 

* * *

 

The next day Sasha was up long before the others, and was playing chess on the computer when Logan emerged from his bedroom.  Like her mother she didn’t seem to need much sleep.  She followed Logan into the kitchen where she cradled a cup of coffee in her hands and watched him from under her thick eyelashes.  He busied himself preparing breakfast, aware of her scrutiny.  Finally he stopped working and said “Alright, what is it?” 

“Max never talks much about, you know, before Sanctuary.  Will you tell me?  Please?” she beseeched.

“What do you want to know about? Manticore?” he asked, somewhat surprised that she didn’t already know all about it.

“Nah.  Manticore’s boring.  It’s not like there’s much to tell.  Just training and exercises.”  Sasha shrugged, casually dismissing Max’s childhood hell.  Since Sasha had never been faced with that particular threat herself, she was indifferent to it.  “I want to know about Seattle.”

So Logan told her about Max’s strange little life: rooming with O.C., working for Normal at Jam Pony, crashing the penthouse for a hot shower and dinner, pulling jobs for Eyes Only, and always searching for her lost brothers and sisters.

Nan joined them and both girls listened, spellbound, as Logan told them story after story about Max and the other transgenics.  He told them about Joshua and Alec’s murderous twins, Zack, Gossamer, Max’s bitchy clone Sam…

Logan sat lost in thought after he finished.  Eventually he dragged himself back to the present.  In the year after Max left, Logan had often tried to imagine Max’s new life.  Sometimes he fantasized that she got bored and came back to him for the excitement of Eyes Only missions.  Sometimes he fantasized that he followed her to Sanctuary, and she came running to him and threw herself into his arms.  Always in his fantasies the virus was history and she came to him willingly, deserting Alec without a second thought.  Not once did he picture her happily settled down with Alec and a child.  And now he wanted to know the truth.  

He looked intently at Sasha and said “I told you about Seattle, now I want to hear about Sanctuary.  Quid pro quo.”

Sasha and Nan took turns describing their home, often interrupting one another. Some of the X-series left, preferring to risk it on their own, but most stayed.  Sanctuary was isolated but it was theirs.  It was the one place in the world where they could be free.  Quite a few kids had been born, and not a single one of them had barcodes.

Almost all of Max’s siblings had tracked them down: Syl, Krit, Zane, Jace and her baby, even Jondy.  Logan knew that part.  Most of them had contacted him through the Eyes Only Informant Net, and he’d directed them on to Sanctuary.  But not Zack; he never did remember who he really was.  For which Logan had to admit he was grateful.  The last thing he needed was a crazed X-5 on his tail trying to kill him for something that wasn’t even true anymore.  Brin never showed up either; no one knew what happened to her after Manticore burned.

Over the years the government sent the X-series on a lot of missions.  As it turned out, the government was thrilled with their little 'arrangement'; they had access to the perfect soldiers for covert ops without having to pay Manticore’s enormous budget.  Max went on several missions, but nothing that Eyes Only wouldn’t approve of – mostly data retrieval, plus a few hostage-takings and kidnappings.  Alec never went unless Max did too, though he always managed to talk Max into extending the mission by a day or two so they could enjoy the outing.

 

* * *

 

The girls were gone by the time Logan woke the next morning.  Despite the shock and pain he’d felt when he’d first realized whose child Sasha was, he was grateful he’d bumped into her.  Reliving his memories of Max had been cathartic for him.  He should have done it long ago.  At first, right after she left, it was too painful so he’d buried his memories under the hurt he felt over her choosing Alec.  By the time he was ready to talk about her it was too late.  O.C. missed Max but she’d moved on, made a new life.  And there was no one else to talk to.

Now he felt at peace.  Part of him would always regret losing her, but that regret was no longer a poison eating away at his heart.  He tidied the penthouse, removing all traces of his unexpected company.  Asha would be home tonight.  He decided to surprise her with a romantic dinner.  He’d make his special garlic chicken, maybe open a bottle of champaign.  He smiled, and whistled to himself while he worked.


End file.
